The Workshop of Stories is the new digital space for the Museums of the Dolomites, available on the DOLOM.IT platform. This continuously evolving space tells the stories of the many natural and cultural treasures of the Dolomites through the voices of 35 cultural institutions and more than 50 museum operators and enthusiasts. This shared narrative came into being with the support of the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation, and crowns a year of success for the ‘Museums of the Dolomites’ project.
Workshop of Stories
The Workshop of Stories is online from 23 July: a new digital space for the Museums of the Dolomites. It forms part of the ‘Museums of the Dolomites’ project, and features multimedia galleries, interactive maps, blogs and memory games related to the culture and life of our mountains. Themes range from traditional rites to the knowledge contained in rocks and fossils, and from the origins of winter sports to forms of adaptation, the mountain economy, and travelling at high altitude.
But most importantly, the Workshop of Stories is freely open to all mountain lovers and enthusiasts throughout the territory, who can share their stories, findings, traditions and experiences in relation to the Dolomites World Heritage Site.
The live broadcast on Facebook on 23 July marked a high point in an excellent year for the Museums of the Dolomites project. The project was launched by the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation in 2019, with the aim of creating networking activities for the various museums in the Dolomites, using digital platforms to promote each individual collection, and inviting residents and visitors to contribute to the story of our Dolomite heritage.
The response has been hugely enthusiastic; we have collected together 500 stories, and 700 digital resources from 35 local cultural institutions and 50 museum operators and enthusiasts. This shared story grew out of the #DolomitesMuseum themed campaign, launched on social networks in February and still continuing to develop on the DOLOM.IT platform.
The most pleasing result was the interaction that developed between the museums in the five provinces, creating a fantastic network with a constant exchange of information and suggestions. Thanks to this network, each individual museum collection can now be regarded and promoted as part of our common heritage: that of the Dolomites.
This rich variety is also reflected in the different languages used in the Workshop of Stories. Indeed, the main pages have been translated into both German and English, and there are many words in Ladin and Friulian.
The wonderful community that has grown up around the project continues to provide us with new narratives and digital content. In coming months, the Workshop of Stories Blog will feature new insights from the museums in relation to each of the 7 sections, and it will also be possible to make new contributions to the galleries.
The Workshop of Stories also includes a special questionnaire for younger inhabitants of the Dolomites, to help us discover how they view the future and the role that museums can play.
Mario Tonina, President of the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation, commented on the new initiative: “It was great to see the virtual doors of the museums were open, even while the physical ones were closed during lockdown. And it was even better to see that they stayed open afterwards. We had the great pleasure of seeing the world of culture respond and become so enthusiastic about our idea of networking and promoting our shared heritage. Working together in a single digital space has opened up new opportunities for the Dolomite museums to link the stories of their collections, explore new heritages, and begin to envision a huge community that really cares about this unique part of the world.”
How to contribute to the galleries
Do you have any objects, memories, or evidence related to the themes of any of the galleries? Write to the project team (museidolomitiunesco@gmail.com): you too will become part of this shared story.